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Children today are getting immunized for the chicken pox, aren’t they?
Did your kids get chicken pox?
Did you have the chicken pox?
Did we talk about this in some variation recently?
Thank you ☺
I had chicken pox, way back in the mid 1970s.
My kids were immunized, and never contracted chicken pox.I had chicken pox at age 5.
I wanted my kids to acquire natural immunity, and it was still not part of the mandatory vaccinations, so I opted not to vaccinate. We waited a long time until they were exposed and came down with it. All my kids caught it from each other, the first actually caught it from a classmate who was vaccinated and had a mild case. My baby at the time caught it too, real bad- was too old to be covered by my immunity but too young to develop her own as a result, meaning she could get it again. Not wanting to put here through it again, and knowing that the actual disease was becoming rarer and rarer as more kids were immunized, I decided in the end to give her the vaccine.When I grew up,there was no vaccine. My mother tried very hard to expose me to friends who were sick so that I, too, would just get it over with. Unfortunately it never seemed to work. It wasn’t until i was 25 that I came down with a strange virus with a few blister-like lesions, but only one had any kind of liquid inside, and even though the doctor tried to get a sample, it was never confirmed to be chicken pox. Fast forward 7 years later and I was expecting my first, in my 9th month, and somehow got exposed to chicken pox. Being that we did not know for sure whether I had it or not, I ended up having a blood test to see what my immunity was. If I was not immune, I had only 96 hours to get a gamma globulin shot to help prevent me from getting sick and hopefully give me some immunity and also for my baby. It is at this late stage of pregnancy, with delivery imminent, that chicken pox can be very dangerous for the fetus. I do not believe that it is a problem in the earlier stages of pregnancy. Anyway, B”H, I was actually immune and did not need to get the extra shot (thanks for one less needle stick, yeah!).
In later years, I did give my kids the chicken pox vaccine (for older ones it was optional and for the younger ones it became part of the package). I did have two kids who ended up getting sick with it in any event, as it is only approximately 70% effective (at least in those days that was the number I heard), but it is supposed to make the illness less serious if the child does actually get sick. Fortunately no one else has gotten sick.
Just as a side note, When I had just gotten over my virus, we heard a tragic story of a 26 year old woman, a mother of 2, who died from the chicken pox that she got from one of her kids. Very scary. It is not a joke when an adult gets sick with a “childhood” illness.
Nechomah: I’m probably not much younger than you (if at all) and my doctors routinely checked for chicken pox immunity during pregnancy (don’t remember at which point, I think during an early visit, but they definitely didn’t wait for the ninth month).
Thankfully, I was always immune, though I never visibly had chicken pox despite my mom’s efforts.
I guess the doctors in the US are more vigilant.
Mammele, I’m not sure how old you are, but that daughter is now 21, a mother of her own 2 pitzkelach, ka’h. You may be right. Even though she was born in US, the initial blood work was done in EY, so it could be that the doctors here did not check for those levels routinely, but you can bet that I did not necessarily have that blood work with me when I came to US to give birth. It was, however, a relief to know that I was not going to have future issues if my kids ever were sick with the chicken pox.
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